From Russia Without Love Read Free Page A

already opened fire on the passenger there, so Chris would immobilize the vehicle by taking out the driver. Two puffs and the body drooped like a glove without a hand, head resting on the steering wheel.
    The lead van sped forward and hit Sonny’s “stalled” vehicle with a smack and pushed it out of the way before turning onto St. James Square and proceeding towards UKP. The van behind it, riddled with bullets from Chris and Sonny, rolled forward into the intersection but didn’t make the turn. A black taxi sped around the square and plowed into the van with a horrific metal crack , smashing the front of the taxi and knocking the van over on its side. The taxi driver appeared pinned between the steering wheel and his seat. He wasn’t moving.
    Behind the first two vans, the third van didn’t go anywhere, but Lullaby and nine of his men—armed with AK-47 assault rifles—poured out of the tail of the vehicle. Chris tried to take a shot, but Lullaby ducked back behind the van before he could squeeze the trigger.
    Sonny was vulnerable standing in the open without any cover or concealment, and he must’ve seen how outnumbered he was because he sprinted toward Chris, who covered him by laying suppressive fire into Lullaby’s group.
    “This is gonna get uglier before it gets prettier,” Sonny said, huffing and puffing as he sprinted.
    The first van had stopped in front of UKP. Its back doors flew open, and a tall blond man jumped to the pavement—Lullaby’s protégé. He was a handsome man who could do ugly things. Then an armed gang of close to a dozen appeared.
    Hannah reported the appearance of Lullaby’s protégé and his men.
    If we weren’t outnumbered before, we’re clearly outnumbered now.
    She must’ve continued to report, but Chris’s visual senses overrode his hearing. Lullaby and his men faced Chris and fired at him from near the third van. Sonny jumped over a fence surrounding the park area, and just after he weaved into the trees, an explosion lifted the tipped-over van completely off the street. The earth quaked, and Sonny stumbled.
    The van must have been packed with explosives intended for UKP. The bomb was probably shaped, so if the van had been positioned on the street next to the curb, most of the damaging force would have been directed at the UKP building. But with the van on its side like it was, most of that blast went into the ground, causing the van to lift into the air. Its flight was short-lived, though, as it fell like a discarded toy next to the gaping hole in the earth it had created. A geyser sprouted up out of the ground like Old Faithful, spewing chunks of asphalt with it.
    “What the hell?” Sonny shouted.
    “Must’ve ruptured a water main instead of the intended target,” Chris guessed.
    “You see Lullaby?”
    “He’s behind the third van, but I can hardly see the van or the enemy through Old Faithful.”
    Hannah didn’t chime in so she must not have been able to see him, either.
    The number of civilian screams increased, and the volume of the steady noise became louder. They were in panic mode. The blare of nearing police sirens added to the racket. Droplets big as tadpoles streamed down Chris’s face. At first he thought it was from the broken water main, but it was raining again.
    “Chris!” a voice screamed from the chaos. Lullaby. “I know you are here. I will find you, and I will kill you!”

1
    _______
    A week earlier…
    C hris wore his clerical collar and minister suit, standing with a young couple at the wedding altar, trying to calm his anxious nerves. There were times he’d been shot at and was calmer than he was now. But there were different kinds of being shot at, ranging from direct hits to blind misses, and this was still closer to the blind-misses end of the spectrum. For Bobby and JoAnne this was the most important moment of their life together, and Chris didn’t want to disappoint them.
    Bobby tugged nervously at the cuff of his black jacket, and